In the [J.G. Ballard] story people from numerous European countries gather in vacation rentals on the Spanish coast. They spend the summer frolicking. At vacation's end everyone decides to stay put and not go home and back to work. Things go swimmingly for a while. Everyone continues playing volleyball and having a good time. As time passes conflicts arise. Small at first but then ever more serious. Beach bodybuilding turns into martial training and erstwhile expatriates become warring camps based on country of origin.
[...]
.......
Cocaine Nights; that's the story.
And yes, that's our Ballard: where others might only see lazy sun bathers, he perceives the self-assembling components of a riot, snapping into place with a precise, sinister majesty.
...
Recently, I've been watching HBO's "Generation Kill". It's remarkable and feels, to me at least, very Ballardian. The same creative team behind the much praised show, "The Wire" adapted Rolling Stone reporter Evan Wright's book for television.
What makes it 'Ballardian' is its detached (but not amoral) examination of the mechanics of invasion and occupation. No narrator is giving breathless speeches about the horrors of war; and although there's footage of bodies none of it is accompanied by the cliche of sad music.
There is, simply, the sober record of a series of horrible things that happened because, this is how a war machine works, this is what it does. It doesn't matter how sweet or sour a person you are, if you're a part of this mechanism designed for killing, you will kill and no doubt, you will kill people who meant you no harm (such as children, riding in the backseat of their father's car as it approaches a hastily erected checkpoint).
This is the sort of reporting Nir Rosen and Patrick Cockburn have been giving us since the US invasion: no melodrama, just a careful and thorough examination of how this thing, this killing thing made of people, works.
But despite its reserve, it gives you a better idea of the crime's true scope and scale than any thing else I've seen.
Actually, I'm quite sure this is a direct result of its reserve.
.d.
-- "Hasn't Anne Hathaway been through enough, you fiends?"
Hamilton Nolan ...................... http://monroelab.net/blog/